Uploaded May 2021 | Updated September 2026, 8 hours ago
What's the importance of our sense of safety to health?
In this episode we’re going to be talking about the neuroscience of safety and how our sense of safety can be hugely important to the way we communicate and learn. Research shows that when we perceive threat, we go into a hyper-vigilant state and certain circuits of the brain shut down to focus on self-protection. If we can become aware of this as it’s happening we can not only use certain tools to mediate it, but we can also help others not end up in that state too.
We are extremely lucky today to go straight to the horses mouth so to speak of this research, speaking with the founder of Polyvagal Theory himself, Dr Stephen Porges. Dr. Porges is the founding director of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium at Indiana University. He is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, and Professor Emeritus at both the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Maryland. He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers across several disciplines including anesthesiology, biomedical engineering, critical care medicine, neurology, neuroscience, obstetrics, pediatrics, psychiatry, psychology, psychometrics, space medicine, and substance abuse.
In this episode we’ll be unpacking his Polyvagal Theory, a theory that links the evolution of the mammalian autonomic nervous system to social behaviour. The theory is leading to innovative treatments based on insights into the mechanisms operating in several behavioural, psychiatric, and physical disorders.
He is the author of several books which we’ll be mentioning in the interview and you can find links to in the show notes, and he is the creator of a music-based intervention, the Safe and Sound Protocol™, which currently is used by more than 1400 therapists to improve spontaneous social engagement, to reduce hearing sensitivities, to improve language processing and state regulation.
What we discuss in this episode:
00:00 Intro
06:29 What’s going on inside people’s heads?
09:00 If your body is in a state of threat you can’t access certain areas of your brain
12:49 What does the Vagal nerve do?
15:00 The sympathetic nervous system for both fight and flight and excitement or exuberance - so good stress vs bad stress
17:00 Facial expression and tone of voice broadcast our physiological state via the Vagal nerve
18:30 What was the experience like of the theory emerging out of the research?
20:00 The vagal paradox: How can the Vagal Nerve be protective and kill you?
22:30 The link between the face/voice and regulation of the heart in new borns. Co-regulation between parent and child
24:00 Polyvagal Theory explained by its founder
24:30 Collaboration and connectedness for the evolution of human survival
26:00 Digestion problems when constantly problem solving
28:00 Bidirectionality: feedback between physiological state and mental state
29:45 Respecting bodily feelings
32:00 Trauma, making ourselves numb, disassociation and turning off your body
34:00 2 systems of bidirectional feedback: between the individual brain and its body and between different bodies
35:00 Co-regulation VS co-exacerbation between individual and collective systems
39:00 The Vagal ‘break’ regulates the threshold of optimal interaction
40:30 Dan Siegal’s ‘window of tolerance’
41:30 Trauma affects vagal efficiency, rendering even high vagal tone (break ability) useless
43:00 Error in thinking about trauma, of focusing on event and not on bodily reaction and feelings
45:30 Stephen’s new book ‘Polyvagal safety: attachment, communication, self-regulation’
48:00 Physical and mental illness are the same, but medical professionals aren’t taught this
51:45 Vagal metrics to help explain ‘medically unexplained symptoms’
52:30 Social connection and safety directly assist neural regulation
54:00 ‘Neural exercise’ (play and social interaction) should be a fundamental part of a healthy education
55:00 Authoritarian threat based education methods inhibit rather than motivate learning
57:00 Moving beyond Paul McLean’s outdated concepts of the Triune brain and the Limbic system
1:03:45 Polyvagal theory working bottom up has simplicity but working top down has complexity
1:04:34 Being listened to is crucial to feeling safe
1:07:30 Voice cues for safety have been critical to man’s survival
1:07:40 The ‘Safe and Sound’ protocol for inducing clam and safety
1:12:00 Tools from Polyvagal theory for bypassing trauma triggers
1:13:45 Listen to your body don’t hack it.
References:
Dr. Stephen Porges ‘The pocket guide to polyvagal theory: the transformative power of feeling safe?’
Dr. Stephen Porges ‘Polyvagal safety: attachment, communication, self-regulation’
stephenporges.com/books
Dan Siegal’s ‘window of tolerance’ concept
Stephenporges.com
Polyvagalinstitute.org
Safe and Sound protocol™
What's the importance of our sense of safety to health?
In this episode we’re going to be talking about the neuroscience of safety and how our sense of safety can be hugely important to the way we communicate and learn. Research shows that when we perceive threat, we go into a hyper-vigilant state and certain circuits of the brain shut down to focus on self-protection. If we can become aware of this as it’s happening we can not only use certain tools to mediate it, but we can also help others not end up in that state too.
We are extremely lucky today to go straight to the horses mouth so to speak of this research, speaking with the founder of Polyvagal Theory himself, Dr Stephen Porges. Dr. Porges is the founding director of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium at Indiana University. He is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, and Professor Emeritus at both the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Maryland. He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers across several disciplines including anesthesiology, biomedical engineering, critical care medicine, neurology, neuroscience, obstetrics, pediatrics, psychiatry, psychology, psychometrics, space medicine, and substance abuse.
In this episode we’ll be unpacking his Polyvagal Theory, a theory that links the evolution of the mammalian autonomic nervous system to social behaviour. The theory is leading to innovative treatments based on insights into the mechanisms operating in several behavioural, psychiatric, and physical disorders.
He is the author of several books which we’ll be mentioning in the interview and you can find links to in the show notes, and he is the creator of a music-based intervention, the Safe and Sound Protocol™, which currently is used by more than 1400 therapists to improve spontaneous social engagement, to reduce hearing sensitivities, to improve language processing and state regulation.
What we discuss in this episode:
00:00 Intro
06:29 What’s going on inside people’s heads?
09:00 If your body is in a state of threat you can’t access certain areas of your brain
12:49 What does the Vagal nerve do?
15:00 The sympathetic nervous system for both fight and flight and excitement or exuberance - so good stress vs bad stress
17:00 Facial expression and tone of voice broadcast our physiological state via the Vagal nerve
18:30 What was the experience like of the theory emerging out of the research?
20:00 The vagal paradox: How can the Vagal Nerve be protective and kill you?
22:30 The link between the face/voice and regulation of the heart in new borns. Co-regulation between parent and child
24:00 Polyvagal Theory explained by its founder
24:30 Collaboration and connectedness for the evolution of human survival
26:00 Digestion problems when constantly problem solving
28:00 Bidirectionality: feedback between physiological state and mental state
29:45 Respecting bodily feelings
32:00 Trauma, making ourselves numb, disassociation and turning off your body
34:00 2 systems of bidirectional feedback: between the individual brain and its body and between different bodies
35:00 Co-regulation VS co-exacerbation between individual and collective systems
39:00 The Vagal ‘break’ regulates the threshold of optimal interaction
40:30 Dan Siegal’s ‘window of tolerance’
41:30 Trauma affects vagal efficiency, rendering even high vagal tone (break ability) useless
43:00 Error in thinking about trauma, of focusing on event and not on bodily reaction and feelings
45:30 Stephen’s new book ‘Polyvagal safety: attachment, communication, self-regulation’
48:00 Physical and mental illness are the same, but medical professionals aren’t taught this
51:45 Vagal metrics to help explain ‘medically unexplained symptoms’
52:30 Social connection and safety directly assist neural regulation
54:00 ‘Neural exercise’ (play and social interaction) should be a fundamental part of a healthy education
55:00 Authoritarian threat based education methods inhibit rather than motivate learning
57:00 Moving beyond Paul McLean’s outdated concepts of the Triune brain and the Limbic system
1:03:45 Polyvagal theory working bottom up has simplicity but working top down has complexity
1:04:34 Being listened to is crucial to feeling safe
1:07:30 Voice cues for safety have been critical to man’s survival
1:07:40 The ‘Safe and Sound’ protocol for inducing clam and safety
1:12:00 Tools from Polyvagal theory for bypassing trauma triggers
1:13:45 Listen to your body don’t hack it.
References:
Dr. Stephen Porges ‘The pocket guide to polyvagal theory: the transformative power of feeling safe?’
Dr. Stephen Porges ‘Polyvagal safety: attachment, communication, self-regulation’
stephenporges.com/books
Dan Siegal’s ‘window of tolerance’ concept
Stephenporges.com
Polyvagalinstitute.org
Safe and Sound protocol™
